I’m old enough to remember the war against the Oderan Pretender, and I thought that was terrible. As a boy, I thought cannons and rifle were as murderous as men could ever need or want, but this war has demonstrated the folly of old men. These new instruments of death seem to have come from nowhere, and they chill me in my bones. I can only pray that this, at last, is the war to end all war. For if there is any further to walk on this road, it will surely end in weapons that can burn the world. —Denrick Roth, The War for Garanhir

  Airship Second Ring of Eternity 09.06.03.18.14

  Nils Civorage still didn’t believe in the calm before the storm.

  But there was, he had found, a calm that came in the moment of its crashing. At the outset of war unleashed, when all preparation was in the past, when the die had been cast, and his role was to stand back and wait for a decision to be needed.

  It was a moment that had come all too soon. He’d hoped to bide his time and strangle Enerlend slowly but inexorably, but with his Encircled proxies in the regiments being identified and removed from his control, the tide of the war inside the duchy had turned against him. Auldenheigh was adequately fed, its industries supplied, its people swayed by their duchess’ witchly powers of persuasion.

  There was little sense in berating himself. He’d known she would come back, after her escape all those years ago. And she would have prepared too. But the degree of preparation…the magical training, the allies she’d made, having a Herald on her side…And at least three Words of Creation.

  Down from four, at least. The one who’d stolen Mind was dead, and that…well, it would have been a victory, if Jared Mab Keeghan had survived the same battle. It could have been a victory if only his prototype had survived for that matter, but the damnable elves had blasted it as they retreated.

  Nils had passed what he could keep of the late engineer’s knowledge on to others, but there were none with Jared’s genius and vision, and none he could trust to the same degree. The only comfort there was that there was no possible way the Enerlish could have gleaned the information: the only man who could have lifted it from Jared’s dying mind was himself dead. The aeroplane would rule the sky in time.

  And for now, he still had an overwhelming superiority of airships. All he needed was for the anti-air batteries along the front line to be silenced, and they could rain down devastation on Ellaenie Banmor’s retreating armies.

  He closed his eyes and scratched at his mustache as a breeze kissed his face. This one was cool and heavy with moisture, promising not a storm, but a dreary grey misty drizzle. Garanhir was rising in its orbit, lifting closer to the sun, and the wind from leadward glued clouds to the landscape and funneled them through King’s Pass so that a soggy woollen mass was marching south. In less than an hour, it would engulf the front line, which put paid to Nils’ plans to use gas shells.

  No matter. He’d brought three times as many troops as the Enerlish had on this line, and he intended to funnel them all into one tight point. Sheer numbers would puncture the line then roll up it. The fighting would be bloody, vicious and desperate, and he’d doubtless have a much depleted force afterwards…but he had many, many more in reserve and available to bear down on the other fronts too. He could afford to bleed a few troops; they would be the martyrs of Iaka’s age of kindness. What price an eternity of peace? Certainly, one grim war was a bargain.

  Still…

  He narrowed his eyes and peered trailward toward Auldenheigh. He felt…watched, somehow. As though something out there saw him and disapproved. Something powerful. The herald maybe? Ever since the day she’d blasted into the duchess’ bedroom and flown her away, he’d known there would be a confrontation between them eventually.

  But this was still a mortal affair. Iaka had been quite clear on that point. There were certain lines that they couldn’t cross without the Crowns and Heralds getting involved, but so long as they didn’t…Rheannach would watch, and lament, but remain impotent. Maybe she was here, watching and grinding her teeth.

  Or maybe…

  He reached out with Mind, but his power was gently deflected, and the hidden attention withdrew.

  Who else could that be but a Herald or Crown? No matter, then. He smiled, and returned his attention to the mist-shrouded trenches, and the nonsense staccato code of flashes within. That was all going well enough, but his attention turned upward, toward the arched ironwork of the bridge. He could feel busy little minds at work down there, feel their intent even if they were too far away for him to exert his own will on them.

  Well, that wouldn’t do at all, though he’d expected it. He directed an imperative at the Encircled embedded in a few units he’d selected for a very specific mission, then lifted his gaze to trailward again. There was an airship out there, miles away. He recognized her at once, even from this far: The Cavalier Queen. Of course, there were few other candidates. The Duchess had precious few airships…

  The question was, how to engineer its destruction? Probably impossible. Easier by far to engineer its irrelevance, and that would be taken care of in the same stroke that secured the bridge.

  He grinned at his distant adversary, and doffed his hat. Today was going to be his. And there was nothing Holten could do about it.

  Nothing at all.

  

  “I understand and respect your concerns sir, but the simple fact is we have put fifteen thousand rounds through our guns without fault, provided the operator obeys the instructions and training provided. If he should blaze away carelessly then of course the mechanism will fail, just as any tool will fail when abused. Let me assure you again: No manufacturer offers an automatic light gun that can match the Lukers Brothers Mk.2 in all four of reliability, longevity, accuracy and stopping power." —Sir Auston Lukers, in a letter to the Quartermaster-general of the Army

  Sewin Bridge, Gwidno Gorge, Enerlend

  “Alright gents, pay attention.”

  Wullem de Tredleck had commandeered a former coaching inn for his company HQ. Or…well, he’d commandeered the pub garden. The main room had been commandeered by General de Brunlay of the first Heighshire Fusiliers, and the back room was currently HQ for the Second Wealdlanders. The Particulars were going to get rained on, probably. No matter: for now, the weather remained dry enough that Wullem had spread his maps across four of the garden tables, and that was good enough. He and his men didn’t need fripperies.

  “As you may have gathered from all the shouting—” he angled his head toward the wall, through which de Brunlay’s muffled voice was still booming “—The right flank’s already in a panic from the shelling, and the Colonel reckons they won’t hold. She reckons Civorage’s plan is to scoop around behind the Fusiliers and roll up the Gwidno Line from dexter, cutting off the wealdlanders and the eighth Rifles from Sewin Bridge. She expects the enemy to punch through here, where the trench line’s thinnest.”

  His pointing stick described arcs across the map. “We have trains bringing up the reserves from Auldenheigh, but they’re hours away. With that in mind, our goal here is to slow the enemy and buy the sappers time to blow the bridge…and bloody well escape with our lives.”

  Men nodded around the room. None of them were especially serious fellows by nature, but in this moment they were all deadly attentive. Wullem noted that fact with a nod, and tapped on his map with a pointing stick.

  “The basic plan is this: we’re going to use the trenches, the supply depots and the woods behind the network as cover. First platoon digs in here, second platoon here, third platoon here. First platoon, you to lie low, hide, play dead. Let the advancing troops get in close, then fuck them up hard and fast. You won’t have long: Civorage has a sort of magical telegram, whatever his Encircled know, he knows instantly. So the second you strike, he’ll start turning artillery your way. You’ll have a minute or two at most, so you kill fast, then fall back to your next hiding spot…here.”

  Tap. Heads nodded.

  “As you pull back, second platoon will provide covering fire, then they in turn will fall back to their prepared position here. If the enemy pursue, they’ll then enter third platoon’s killing ground, here.”

  Tap. Nods.

  “If they don’t push, that’s even better. The whole point is to slow their advance. Stacking bodies will forward that goal, but making them too shit-scared to push forward will do it even more so. I want you to leave dirty tricks everywhere. Bombs on long fuses, marksmen in concealment ready to snipe officers and serjants, and especially the Encircled if you can identify them.”

  He looked up from the map and swept a hard, level gaze around the gathering. “There are no rules in this fight, lads. We are not at home to gentlemanly notions of warfare, we are not stupid enough to stand up and get shot down. We fade into the landscape, we cripple and burn and stab and blow up. We do not under any circumstances give the foe a clear target, and we make his life fucking miserable in the process. We are not here to be a pinprick, or a nuisance. We’re here to make ourselves the one group of men that Nils Civorage hates above all others. Any questions?”

  There were none, only wry, malicious grins.

  “Right, then. Get on with it.”

  They filed back through the pub doors and out to go deliver the news to the troops.

  As they went, Wullem realized a lad of about sixteen was doing his best to force his way past in the other direction, and largely being ignored despite holding up a telegraph and desperately calling “Major! Major de Tredleck!”

  Wullem sighed and pushed forward to twitch it out of his fingers to unfold it.

  FRM COL MSJY TO MAJ TRDLK SAPRS EST 5 HRS WORK STOP 2ND CO STND RESRV BELLCROSS FARM STOP NME NUMBERS APPROX 6000 MEN 6 BTRS 12 SHIPS STOP OUR NUMBERS APPROX 2000 MEN 2 BTRS 1 SHIP STOP BE BOLD STOP

  Such comforting words from my delicate darling. Wullem chuckled darkly at his own inner sarcasm, acknowledged the runner with a CURT nod, and tossed the message flimsy into the fire on his way out the door.

  Okay. Outnumbered three to one, and the enemy had an overwhelming advantage in terms of artillery and airships. On paper, a grim position to be in. In practice…maybe his finest caper yet. Or the death of him.

  He’d find out which by lunchtime.

  Humming happily to himself, he accepted a rifle from one of his men, and got to work.

  

  Oh Mollie, dear Mollie, it’s Serjant Deray I write you from trenches all muddy and grey Now brace your poor heart, love, for I take pen in hand, To send you the news that no sweetheart can stand.

  Oh Mollie, sweet Mollie, pray don’t shed a tear Your Jimmie was bravest of all the men here He spoke of you fondly come rain and come sun And swore that he’d marry you once this was done.

  But Mollie, dear Mollie, the shells fell today And poor brave ol’ Jimmie got caught in the fray He stood tall at his post but then let out a cry And went up like fireworks, a good thirty high!

  Oh Mollie, now Mollie, ‘twas a hell of a sight The poor bastard shot in the air, set alight And Mollie, I know this will come as a wrench he landed in pieces all over the trench!

  Oh Mollie, poor Mollie, now don’t take it bad It took us three hours to scrape up your lad We found most of his fingers, though he’s still missing three Found his guts on the wire and his arse in a tree!

  Dear Mollie, oh Mollie, The worst’s saved for last His nadgers were prob’ly destroyed by that blast And we ne’er found his kidneys, though we searched all night through So I’m fair sure they might have gone into the stew!

  So Mollie, aye Mollie, I want you to know We’re sending him home, but not all in one go The postage is murder, the rates are a crime So expect him in parcels, a week at a time! —Composed and sung in the trenches of the Urstoin front

  Gwidno Line frontline trenches

  “Down! Down! Keep thy bastard ‘eads down!”

  Corporal Elpany couldn’t stop flinching with each explosion. Every one sent a flower of dirt into the air and rang his rib cage like a bell, and every one was, but for an accident of fractions of a degree, another death narrowly avoided. Every time the blast rattled his heart, it was a reminder that said heart was still beating.

  It was no comfort at all to know that if ever a shell did kill him, he’d never know about it.

  There was no silence between each roar and boom. Instead there was shouting, the notes of signal whistles and the screams of the wounded and panicking. Some of the younger lads—brave, stupid fools—were responding to panic by trying to get up on the fighting steps and shoot back at an enemy who wouldn’t even be in view yet. It was all Elpany could do to drag them back down into the relative safety of the trench’s bottom and yell some sense into them before moving on.

  Up ahead, a shell struck a trench section perfectly in the middle, and Elpany saw a man lifted into the air, his arms windmilling while his legs went spinning off in a different direction.

  He didn’t stop to think about it, just pushed forward.

  “No, thou soddin’ wankers, stay down! Down, I says!”

  He wriggled through the hole where the hit section had been, leaping lightly over an unidentifiable lump of mangled flesh to scrabble out the other side. The dugout was just twenty meters further on, and he slithered into it with a gasp. Lieutenant Sperring held up a hand to him as he entered: he was busy listening furiously to something on the field telephone. After a second, he threw it down in disgust.

  “Elpany?”

  “Report from watch post at line end, sir.”

  You couldn’t wire it down, man?” Sperring took the message slip and scanned it.

  “Wire’s cut, sir. An’ Serjant Halver’s dead.”

  “…Fuck.” Sperring handed the message to his own telegraph operator. “Send this up to Company.”

  That done, he strode to the dugout entrance and bellowed, “Serjant Olsom!” before ducking back inside. “Elpany-you’re serjant now. I need you to hold your men steady. Any minute now the shelling’s going to stop and then we’ll be in for a damn sticky fight. They’re going to hit your flank first, so take Olsom and his men back up there with you.”

  “Yessir.”

  It took another minute or so for Olsom to arrive, have matters explained to him, and to get his men in motion—Elpany didn’t wait. He was already on his way back up the line

  He’d only just made it to the far side of the still-steaming shell hole when he realized things were oddly quiet. It took him fully ten seconds to wrap his head around why.

  The shelling had stopped.

  Shit.

  “Up! Up! Get up on’t firing step! Up, thou bastards!”

  He heaved one trembling man to his feet, pressed a dropped rifle into his hands and gave him a clout on the shoulder that got the shaken soldier back into a fighting frame of mind. The man was up and aiming out across the shell-ruined expanse of churned mod in front of him in seconds, sweeping the low, clinging mist and smoke for signs of human movement.

  Elpany put his head down and charged, weaving back and forth between men in the trench’s tight confines. He was still barely halfway back when he heard the snap and crack of rifle fire away up the trench in front of him. Somewhere out among the drifting fumes, mist and smoke, a trumpet sounded the charge.

  Cursing viciously under his breath, he pushed on as the men around him started to fire, shooting at shapes in the fog. He heard screams, yells, battle cries, more trumpets and signal whistles. Behind him, he heard somebody cry ‘grenade!’ just before the section of trench he’d just run through was rocked by the detonation. Something hot scored a line across this leg, but he ignored it and pushed on.

  An especially furious exchange of gunfire from up ahead told him his men were still fighting hard, but there was no time to think about it: a man beside him yelled a wordless cry of panic and dismay, then was blown clean across the trench by the heavy thudding report of a shotgun: his killer stood silhouetted on the trench’s edge, aiming down as he worked his weapon’s pump action.

  Elpany shot him. The bullet tore up through the fellow’s guts and he staggered, lost his footing, slid down into the trench with blood bubbling in his mouth to spill down the front of his bright red Cantrese tunic. Red so the blood wouldn’t, supposedly. It didn’t work.

  Their eyes met. There was no hate in the dying man’s face, only sorrow and fear…then nothing. Elpany couldn’t think what to say, and there was no time anyway.

  More signal whistles were blaring, more shouting. He surged to his feet to keep pushing on toward his men, but a heavy hand came down on his shoulder. He rounded to murder the man who’d come up on him, but it was Serjant Olsom.

  “Can’t thee ‘ear bloody whistles?!” he roared over the gunfire. Elpany blinked, and listened, hearing the notes for the first time. High, low-high, low-high.

  The retreat. They were calling the retreat.

  “Bugger that, we—”

  “Come on you silly fuck!” Olsom yanked on him. “Look!”

  Elpany turned his eyes back up the line, toward his section, his squad, his mates. But Cantrese troops were pouring down with shotguns and bayonets, and the shooting had stopped.

  Olsom threw a grenade, and heaved him back down the line.

  “Come the fuck on you daft shit!”

  Elpany’s feet did what his brain was too slow to do, and moved. He fired back as he went, keeping the attackers’ heads down as he joined Olsom’s squad in fighting their way back toward the supply trench.

  All around him, the rout began in earnest. His boots slipped in mud and blood as the men around him fought desperately to claw their way faster along the trench to safety.

  The whistles wailed again, shrill and frantic. One of the lads from Olsom’s squad—Sutton, whose sister worked in a textile mill back home—collapsed in shocked silence as a Cantrese bayonet skewered him from behind . Elpany shot the man holding it, but the boy went facedown in the muck, and didn’t even try to rise.

  They forced their way through the bottleneck at the suply trench, digging their way through a scrum of overwhelmed men. There were no more whistles now, just the yells of men trying to survive, and other men trying to organize them amidst abject terror.

  “Fall back! FALL BACK!!”

  “Form a fucking line! Form and hold it for your lives!”

  That last was Sperring, striding tall and dignified through the madness as though it couldn’t touch him. Elpany obeyed his lieutenant on terrified instinct, formed the line with a dozen other men. Somehow, they laid down a withering, disciplined hail that kept the Cantrese heads down.

  “Well done, gentlemen. Back by the numbers! Orderly withdrawal!”

  Elpany stepped back. His boots scrabbled to climb across something soft, but firm. It was Olsom’s corpse. He’d never noticed the man’s death.

  They made the bend in the trench which represented a few seconds’ safety, and limped onwards, running now. Something in Elpany’s leg throbbed hotly, and he tried to remember when he’d been hit.

  Not important right now. Right now, all that mattered was getting away. The enemy’s army was hitting them in full force, and they had failed to hold.

  All around him, the Enerlish line broke.

  Airship Cavalier Queen, near the Gwidno Line, Enerlend

  Jerl was gaining a new appreciation for just how twisted Civorage’s use of Mind truly was.

  The man’s presence across the surrounding landscape put him in mind of both spiders and puppeteers. Threads of thought and imperative wove over the hills and among the trees, knotting themselves around a few rare unfortunates, each just as thoroughly cocooned as a spider’s larder. As Civorage plucked the strings, his hollowed-out prey danced and jerked to his tune.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  He’d thought it was sickening before, but this new perspective truly turned his stomach. How did somebody go so wrong?

  Well…pain, of course. Nils Civorage was just a man, not some elemental force. He’d been shaped by his life, his youth and his traumas, just like everyone else. But what traumas could yield this?

  Down below, men were dying. Jerl could feel their minds as little pinpricks of panic, confusion, fear, desparation…and agony. He could feel deaths happening. Deaths that would happen, even if he pulled time back and somehow came here earlier. Maybe different men would die, at different times, and some would live who fell today while others fell who lived today, but this battle would happen no matter what he did.

  There was only one route forward to minimize the tally of lives. And for now, that was to wait for Adrey’s signal.

  Civorage’s attention turned his way like a spotlight in the fog, and Jerl deflected him with a deft touch inherited from Mouse. He smiled as he felt the frown on his adversary’s brow, and turned away to consider their new weapons.

  The Queen no longer had big guns. Instead, when he’d commissioned a number of the new “machine guns” from the Lukers Brothers Firearms Co, he’d kept eight to mount on the airship’s deck, two at each corner.

  Throw in the six now mounted on the half-dozen airplanes in their cradles along each side, and Padrig had been able to find a role for every one of his gunnery crew. It was a funny sight, really: they’d taken the guns off, and made the Cavalier Queen far more fearsomely armed than any other ship in the sky as a result. All she needed was the right moment.

  Soon.

  He wandered down from the fo’c’sle and toward his own plane. It was the very newest, beneficiary of all the lessons the engineers had learned in two months of churning them out, and he’d had it painted it in his colors as the Baron of Heighford, sapphire blue and rosehip red. She gleamed in her cradle.

  Part of the gleam was thanks to his gunner, Vayada, who’d spent the last several days lacquering and buffing the machine’s canvas fuselage to a shine.

  She gave him a cheerful grin as he approached, and not for the first time he reflected that she stood out from her Set in several ways. The Rüwyrdan were a gloomy, serious and self-loathing lot as a rule, but Vaya was…bubbly. And she didn’t take herself seriously at all. A few weeks ago she’d won a fur-lined cap off one of the Lotharsson twins in a game of two-card-nothing, and had never taken it off since except to modify its earflaps so her own pointed lobes could peek comfortably out the sides.

  “’Ya finish brooding, boss-man?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t brooding, thank you,” Jerl chuckled. “I was watching.”

  “Sure, sure. All alone up there with ‘ya hands in ‘ya pockets starin’ out at into the mists…not broodin’.”

  “It’s a battle, Vaya. I would have thought a Penitent would take it seriously.”

  “I know. Miserable fucks.” She popped up onto the plane’s back, taking an ammo can with her. “We got a chalan to pay, and we’re payin’ it. We’re doin’ the right thing! ‘S’a’reason to be cheerful, I say.”

  “People are dying,” Jerl pointed out.

  “Not ‘cuz of me, though!” She twitched a small shrug. “Some other cachcran’s the monster here.”

  “Well, you’re not wrong…” Jerl admitted.

  Vaya wrestled the ammo can down inside the plane’s interior and clipped it into place alongside its fellows. “…How bad is it down there?” she asked, more soberly.

  “Let’s just say I prefer it up here, where skill and experience count for something.”

  She went still for a second, nodded, and gestured down for the next can. He handed it up to her and watched her wriggle it down into the rack of wire clips inside the gunner’s little circle. She grunted as she snapped it securely into place then sat up and nodded.

  “Alright. Ready.”

  “Just in time, I think,” Jerl noted, wandering over to the near rail and gripping the plane’s cradle so he could lean out and look down. The steel was wet with misty condensation, and cold enough to feel through his glove. The fog below was still impenetrable, and neithers the flashes of explosions within it, nor the pillars of smoke rising from it here and there, did anything to give the mayhem any shape.

  He looked up to the wheelhouse, where Sin was standing next to Gebby, scanning the clouds with keen, green eyes. She looked down, gave him a terse hand gesture—’still waiting’—and resumed her vigil.

  Jerl looked back down in time to see an especially large set of detonations some two miles away. Were those…?

  He got his answer almost immediately. Barely five seconds after the rippling flashes, a green flare shot high above the mists near the bridge. Civorage’s men had destroyed the anti-air batteries and he was committing his airships.

  Above him on the plane, Vayada grinned and slid into her gunner’s seat. “Time to fly?”

  Jerl nodded up at her, then turned and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Sin! You have my ship! Ring the bell!”

  She flashed him a tight nod by way of bidding him good luck, and reached out to ring. They’d been at battle quarters for the last hour or so, of course, but now pilots and gunners rushed to their planes, and Gebby turned the wheel hard over. Jerl heaved himself up into his plane and pulled on his own flight cap and goggles as the ship turned.

  It was time to commit and see how well these new machines could fight.

  Woods near the Gwidno Line, Enerlend

  “Steady, Tracker. Give them a moment longer.”

  “Yes sir, Lieutenant. Now if’n ye’d kindly shut th’fuck up so’s I can concentrate…”

  Tracker heard Fairstreet chuckle, and allowed a small twitch of humor to cross his own lips. The lieutenant wasn’t a bad sort, as officers went. Crowns knew, the military was full of young men who thought being in charge meant they had to poke their beaks into everything, but Fairstreet…he’d never admit to liking the man, but he did. He only gave a shit about the important stuff.

  Up ahead of them, the Cantrese forces were moving in disciplined groups, leapfrogging forward by tens as they bullied the retreating Enerlish. As ever, the Colonel’s predictions were perfect.

  The moment came. The Cantrese men left cover to chase their quarry forward over the open killing ground. Their lead man reached and passed the marker…

  “FIRE!”

  Rifles cracked. The Particulars’ two Lukers guns opened up, chewing field and flesh alike, and the poor Cantrese didn’t stand a spitball’s chance in the fire. Tracker worked his rifles lever action, saw one man miraculously standing up amid the hail of bullets trying to bring his weapon around to return fire, and shot the brave fool through the heart. In just five seconds, nearly sixty men were dead.

  “Move, gents!”

  They got up and ran, crouching low as shouts and rifle fire rang out behind them. Tracker resisted the urge to glance left into the small cops of trees and bushes where Second Platoon would be lurking, and focused instead on simply going.

  Bullets whined and zipped past him. The fucking redbacks were quick, he’d give ‘em that, but they weren’t turning haste into accuracy, and the Particulars jinked and dodged, scurrying between folds in the ground and abandoned farm carts as they legged it for—

  A second disciplined volley of rifle fire and the hammering of two more Lukers told him the plan had worked perfectly. The shouting and shooting from the pursuing force ended like somebody had smashed a magestone.

  They made the farmhouse and bundled behind its walls. Tracker tucked his rifle through a notch in one corner where a brick had fallen out and aimed back toward the enemy advance. Sure enough, they were keeping their heads down now.

  Fairstreet tapped his shoulder. “Don’t dawdle, Takes. Artillery’s coming.”

  “Right behind you, sir.”

  Fairstreet nodded and took off running, keeping the building between himself and the redback. Tracker grinned as he saw a fella with a gold hunting horn on his sleeve gesticulating and yelling at his men to motivate them. He settled his sights, squeezed the trigger, and was rewarded with a satisfying crimson mist as the man’s head jerked and he dropped boneless into the mud.

  That should keep ‘em afeared a mite longer…

  He turned and ran.

  Thirty seconds later, the farmhouse vanished in a blizzard of stone fragments and wooden splinters. Tracker just laughed and continued to dodge through the woods. Behind him, he could hear the drone of airships coming down the pass, and that meant the anti-air batteries were gone.

  Things were about to get even more interesting.

  Sewin Bridge, Enerlend

  “Colonel Mossjoy!”

  Adrey looked up. Her “command post” was nothing to write home about, just a shed for rail wagons on the hostile side of the bridge. But it had the advantage that both message riders and telegraphs came right past it, and she’d tapped into both. She had a clearer picture of the battle from here than she possibly could have anywhere else.

  It was going pretty much exactly as predicted, thus far. Up to and including General de Brunlay’s arrival. The man was retreating his own headquarters back over the river.

  “General?”

  De Brunlay glanced around as he stepped inside. His uniform was stained with dust and mud, Adrey noted. Clearly, he’d been closer to the action than a general officer usually would. A point in his favour, that.

  “How are we doing?” he asked.

  For once, Adrey was surprised. The general had struck her as the old-fashioned sort who didn’t approve of women participating in the military at all. Though he’d never said anything disrespectful to her, she’d noticed his subtle tells of silent agreement when somebody else did.

  The battle, it seemed, had brought out a different side: the competent officer who wanted only to know what was going on, and didn’t care for fripperies like where that information came from.

  She waved him toward her map. “The Fusiliers were swept aside straight away. Complete rout, I’m afraid. I set my Particulars to slow the enemy’s advance through that section with a series of ambushes.”

  De Brunlay’s gloved fingers pinched at and rolled the corners of his waxed mustache, attempting to smooth it out. He scowled at what she was showing him. “Dirty tactics, Colonel.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  De Brunlay grunted something that was very nearly a chuckle, and considered the other pieces of bric-a-brac she’d set on the map to represent units. “You’ve a clearer picture of what’s going on than I do.”

  “A lot of it is extrapolation and informed guesswork, sir, but that happens to be something I’m uncannily good at. I’m expecting the first of the Wealdlanders and the Rifles to reach the bridge within the next ten minutes or so. Once they’re across, I’ll pull the Particulars back.”

  “We need to blow the damn bridge. I’ve been looking for the sappers—”

  “I already started on that, sir.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Rather jumping the gun aren’t you, Mossjoy?”

  She gave him an innocent look. “Anticipating your orders, general.”

  “Hm. Well. Good ma—ah, that is, well done. Excellent initiative.”

  De Brunlay orbited the table, still fidgeting with his mustache for several seconds. Adrey, calculating that it would be most sensible to let him think, waited patiently.

  “…How many of our boys can we save?” the general asked, at last.

  “That hangs in the balance. If they can manage a fighting retreat, casualties should be relatively light. If it turns into a complete collapse, that’s a different matter.”

  “Those damn airships will force the collapse, now the anti-air is gone,” De Brunlay said.

  “Actually sir…the Duchess’ companions have put something in place to turn that to our advantage.”

  His eyebrows chased up his forehead, into territory long ago ceded by his hairline. “Indeed? Something I didn’t know about?”

  “Sorry, general. Her Grace wanted to play this one close to the vest.”

  “Play what?” De Brunlay asked.

  Adrey grinned, pointed upward, and cocked her head to one side to set her free hand to her ear with a touch of theatre. De Brunlay frowned at her, then looked upward and listened.

  Over the distant echoing thunder of the battle, a new noise became faintly audible, then swelled, grew, multiplied—

  And six airplanes thundered low over the command post with their engines buzzing.

  In the air above the Gwidno Line

  Now this was the way to fly!

  Jerl grinned into his scarf as he pulled back on the control stick and climbed. He’d practiced hard on learning how to fly these new machines, sensing through Time that he needed to be a master of them. He’d even cheated a little and used the Words to grant himself more time to learn, and to glean experience and thoughts from the minds of other pilots.

  His existing experience as a helmsman helped, of course. But piloting an airplane was to helming an airship as swimming was to wading. So much faster. So much freer.

  He sensed the moment Civorage saw them coming. Sensed the disbelief, the confusion, then the mounting consternation and the panic just a step behind. Some of the smaller, lighter airships in his fleet turned, trying to present their guns to the oncoming planes, but one may as well try to swat a fly with a sledgehammer; a little flick of the wings, a slip sideways, and their aim was already spoiled.

  “Ready?” He yelled over his shoulder. Vayada laughed, and he heard the mechanical clicking of her Lukers’ firing handle.

  “Ready!”

  Something was burning below. The hot air welling up off the flames made the plane bounce and jump, lifted it just a touch higher. Jerl glanced to his right and saw two of his wingmen in a V formation behind him. He raised a hand and gestured, got a wing-waggle in acknowledgment, and then…

  Plunged into the fray.

  Civorage’s airships were in a dispersed line-abreast formation, suitable for confronting ground-based guns and giving each ship plenty of room to adjust to turbulent air or turn to present its guns on a suitable target. The planes zipped between them, picked a target, and entered tight orbits above the maximum elevation of their guns. Behind Jerl’s head, Vaya’s Lukers gun chattered away like a man clapping ferociously. She was using incendiary rounds, which left trace lines of blue smoke through the air from their burning phosphorous tips.

  The results were devastating. A line of patch fires stitched itself across the nearest gas-bag, and though frantic men swarmed the rigging to dump water on the flames, there were just too many little fires. As Jerl watched they spread, joined up, got into the pitch-soaked ropes and oiled canvas of the bag envelopes. Hazy blue lift-gas begun to leak among the smoke, turning the flames strange colors where the two vapors mixed.

  By the time he’d completed a second orbit, the stricken ship was descending rapidly, and men were diving overboard with parachutes. He pulled the stick over and came around to line up on his next victim.

  +How?!+

  Civorage’s outrage was a mental bellow so forceful that Vaya’s gunning paused a moment, and Jerl saw his wingmen’s trajectories falter as they briefly had to concentrate through the mental assault. He stretched out his own protection to shield them, and replied calmly.

  Hung on your own rope, Nils. We got the plans off Mab Keeghan after all.

  The pauses was long enough to be telling in its own right, and put a savage smile on Jerl’s face.

  +…Holten?+

  Jerl’s smile, without ever changing, turned into a snarl. He pulled the stick over and his plane slipped sideways through the air to fly a ring around Civorage’s flagship Vaya opened up, and as before blooms of fire began to spread across the massive airship’s envelope. The gunners on its deck cranked furiously on their weapons’ aiming wheels, trying to track him, and a few even fired. Jerl’s snarl became a rictus as airburst shrapnel whined past him and even nicked his plane’s fabric here and there, but neither he nor Vaya were struck, and the plane didn’t seem to notice.

  In a moment, the Clear Skies flagship was ablaze. Jerl watched with satisfaction as the tall, greatcoated figure on the front deck vaulted the rail and fell away, swaying on the end of his parachute lines. For a moment, he was tempted to come around and have Vaya machine-gun Nils while he was helpless...but there was no point. Better to leave him in the same old body than kill him and free his mind to jump to another one.

  +Enjoy your toys while they last+ Civorage told him. +My own will be ready soon.+

  Jerl didn’t dignify him with a reply. Instead, he looked around and took stock of the sky. Around him, the entire enemy airship fleet was going down in flames. Several had already struck the ground and spread themselves across the muddy expanse of no-man’s-land in a series of broken and burning hulks that would likely litter the landscape for years to come. He could feel the confusion among the ground troops, many of whom were turning aside from the assault to render aid to those airmen who hadn’t been able to abandon ship. The shock of their confusion and dismay was running like a wave across the entire army, slowing them and taking some spine out of them.

  All told…a good day’s work. **And the worst any of his planes had to show for it was a little tattering on one of his own wings.

  He grinned, fished a signal flare gun out of its pouch beside him, and fired it into the air.

  As one, the airplanes turned their noses back toward Auldenheigh, and flew home triumphant.

  Sewin Bridge, Enerlend

  Men streamed past Wullem, many of them in an abject panic.

  It wasn’t just the circumstances of the battle. Overwhelming numbers, artillery and slaughter were all terrifying enough, but there was something else, some other force he could feel battering against the walls of his mind. An outside thought that wanted him to believe things were worse than they truly were.

  The power of Mind.

  It drove the Enerlish before it like dust before a broom, and stoked the Cantrese men into a fury. Thanks to Civorage’s will and intent, both sides agreed on a shared point: that the attackers were invincible, unstoppable and overwhelming, and that the only hope any man on the defending side had lay in flight.

  The Particulars were inoculated. Each man had been issued a small vial of potion for exactly this purpose, so they stood firm as the fleeing regiments stampeded past them over the bridge. Even so, it was all Wullem could do to encourage them to hold fast.

  He strode back and forth among the Particulars’ prepared positions, handing out words of encouragement and little bon mots. He got little smiles, some jokes in return, but his men were tight-focused now, tense as harp strings. At any moment—

  He heard a volley of fire from his right, and terse yells of alert and alarm. In moments, a withering horizontal storm of lead was raking both ways between the foxholes and the buildings on one hand, and the open ground the enemy was trying to cross on the other.

  “That’s the way, lads! Pile it on! Show ‘em who we are!”

  Wullem’s voice was a roar as he strode along the line of battle, back tall, sword in one hand, pistol in the other. Bullets cracked past him, whined and zipped through the air and his heart pounded with fear and exhilaration. This could be it! At any second, a stray round might blow him away!

  But he’d be damned if he let any man see him cower.

  “Peckins! two o’ clock, my lad! Get their heads down! Brackin! Up you get, you look fucking daft in the mud like that! Come on! Keep firing! Keep firing, lads!”

  For a wonder, he even seemed to inspire some of the fleeing regulars. Pairs of men, even squads, peeled away from the river of fleeing soldiery to find some cover and start shooting back at their harassers.

  A particularly heavy burst of fire did, finally, force him to seek cover for a second, and he found himself behind a stone wall next to a group of Fusiliers who gave him awestruck looks. He grinned, produced his pipe from his pocket, and lit it with a snap of his fingers.

  “Quite the caper, gents,” he commented drily as he reloaded. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  One man gave him a nervous chuckle. “Couldn’t let you ‘ave all the fun, sir,” he ventured, in a shaky voice.

  “Plenty to go around!” Wullem replied jovially. He turned and called past the wall, which was thumping and shedding chips of mortar as bullets hammered it. “Lieutenant Fairview! Would you mind awfully making those chaps in the ditch shut up?”

  “Working on it, sir!”

  Wullem nodded and puffed his pipe. “…What’s your name?” he asked conversationally of the nearest fellow, whose uniform was so muddy and bloody as to completely hide the original colours.

  “Uh…Corporal Den Elpany, sir. First Auldenheigh Fusiliers.” The man tugged his forelock.

  “Planning on living through the day, Elpany?”

  Elpany gave a nervous, wide-eyed sort of giggle. “That’d be nice, yeah.”

  “Good man. So am I!” Wullem nodded as there was an explosion and the firepower battering his wall abruptly ceased. “Follow me, then!”

  The next little while was a blur he’d never remember clearly enough to write about. Time and again, the Cantrese tried to find a weakness. Time and again, the Particulars drove them back. Within minutes, the most plentiful cover available was to hide behind a corpse.

  Then came the moment he’d been waiting for. Out among the clearing mists, something huge fell from on high, trailing flames. Civorage’s mental pressure released.

  Without him driving them forward, the Cantrese advance became much more timid, and the last fleeing Enerlish stragglers found new heart. Wullem followed the last instruction Adrey had given him to the letter: he was bold. It wasn’t bravery that kept his back straight and his head high despite all common sense. Instead, he trusted her prediction and calculations. She’d said if he was bold, he’d live through the day.

  And if he didn’t…well, so what?

  Whether it was faith or fatalism that drove him, the Particulars, and all the stragglers from other regiments who paused to pitch in, seemed to inherit a sense of invincibility from him…and, he was quite sure, if he did fall, they’d find a vengeful fury instead.

  So it came as a surprise to him when a hard tug on his sleeve dragged him back into the cover of a scarred and blasted tree trunk…and he found himself, for a moment, in warm proximity to Adrey Mossjoy.

  A marksman’s bullet thunked into the wood, right where his head had been half a second earlier.

  “…Well. Thank you, colonel.”

  “You’re very welcome.” She grinned at him, leaned around past the tree, thrust her arm out with a pistol in it, and fired once. Somehow, even though she hadn’t been properly aiming, Wullem didn’t doubt she’d just killed his would-be sniper. “Time to withdraw. The bridge is ready to blow.”

  Wullem gave her a nod, and turned. “Elpany! Got your signal whistle?!”

  The young corporal gave him a wide-eyed nod, though his eyes were on Adrey. “Yes sir!”

  “Sound the withdrawal!”

  Elpany fumbled at his throat, pulled a grimy brass tube from under his collar, wet his lips, and blew into it. The piercing notes, High, low-high, low-high, were almost more deafening than the gunfire this close.

  Particulars and regulars alike fell back in good order, laying down a healthy pattern of overlapping fire as each squad withdrew. The Lukers guns were an especially effective deterrent, and by the time Civorage’s forces knew they were leaving, they were already gone.

  Wullem and Adrey were among the last over, though Wullem noted Elpany sticking by his side to the very last. Eventually, they’d made it to the safety of the friendly side of the river, and Adrey pulled her own signal whistle to blow a command on it: pi-pi-pip! pi-pi-pip! pi-pi-peeep!

  The blasts that followed were monstrous.

  The whole reason for the bridge was that the river Gwidno here ran at the bottom of a crack in the earthmote some two hundred feet across and nearly as deep. Now, the cast iron framework of Sewin Bridge arched its back like a frightened cat, then dropped. In seconds, the whole span of it was gone and the sounds of cast iron and splintered wood booming down into the gorge were almost as loud as the battle had been

  In the aftermath, silence.

  Well, no. Not silence. There was still the occasional crack and zip as men on either side of Gwidno Gorge took pot-shots at each other. But the artillery had ceased, the anti-air guns were silent, and the cries of pain nearby were those of men struggling with the wounds they’d already taken, not of new agonies.

  Wullem took a deep breath, and holstered his pistol.

  “Lieutenant Fairview!” he called, trying to still his pounding heart.

  “’E’s shot, sir!” someone replied.

  Shit. “How bad?”

  “Corpsman said ‘e should be alright sir, jus’ needs the healers.”

  “Alright….get me a count of the wounded and dead.”

  “Yessir!”

  “Twenty-seven dead,” Adrey murmured, softly. Wullem glanced down at her, and knew she was right. She was always right.

  “…Could have been worse,” he said.

  “Yes. Would have been, if not for…you should get that looked at.”

  “What?” Wullem frowned, then realized his right shoulder stung a bit. When he investigated it, he found not one but two holes in the meat of his upper arm. He hadn’t noticed either, even though the blood was dripping from his fingertips. He blinked at then, confused.

  Adrey chuckled, fished a magestone from her pocket, and pressed her spare hand to his wounds. She was no delicate touch as a healer, and Wullem inhaled sharply as she shoved the magic into his flesh with more power than kindness. But the pain faded quickly. In its place was a prickly, tingly feeling.

  “There. That should tide you over.” She stepped back, gave him a wry look, then jerked her head toward a nearby goods shed. “Debrief once a real medic’s tended to you. I expect to have heard some good news by then.”

  “From who?” Wullem asked, flexing his fingers and savoring the ache. The ache meant he was still alive. Around him, several other men were letting out the shaky, slightly hysterical laughs of those who’d come through carnage and lived to see the other side. Elpany in particular was slumped behind some sandbags, weeping and laughing in equal measure. Good man, that. Wullem resolved to offer him a spot in the Particulars.

  Adrey grinned. “From the Shin Yi.”

  “Why, what have they been up to?”

  Her grin got even wider.

  “I sent them to capture Nils Civorage,” she said.

  No Man’s Land, the Gwidno Line

  Nils lay on his back and stared up at the columns of smoke rising around him into the clearing blue sky.

  He’d broken his leg on landing. An airman’s parachute didn’t really slow a man of his height and weight quite enough for safety, but as the old saw had it, better a busted ankle than burning to death. And his proxies knew where he was. In a couple more minutes, they would find him, heal his leg, and he would…walk home.

  “…Fuck.”

  Today had not been a good day. In fact, he was beginning to wonder whether Iaka had really succeeded in dislodging Thaighn Saoirse’s curse after all. Losing Jared had been a blow enough, but he’d been consoled by the thought that the fellow who’d stolen and spoken Mind was dead and so the Enerlish wouldn’t get their hands on Jared’s designs.

  But instead…here he was, with the wreckage of his airships burning on the battlefield around him, and Holten had the power of Mind now.

  How had that happened? He couldn’t figure it out. They’d thrown the Word away, for crying out loud! Its vault now tumbled endlessly through the infinite void, beyond any hope of retrieval! The thief’s death should have been the end of it!

  He grimaced as his agitation sent a spike of pain up his leg, and willed himself to remain still.

  …He had no airships. The rebels had aeroplanes. They still had Mind, as well as Time and two others. And now, the bridge over the Gwidno was destroyed. And his leg still felt both cold and hot from pain.

  At last, there were the sound of running footsteps, and one of his proxies and a couple of corpsmen appeared against the sky. The proxy pointed at him, and the men with their stretcher started to pick their way down the slope.

  “It’s alright, general. We have you.”

  “It’s just a broken leg,” Nils told them, adding the faint harmonics that made men pliable. “Just set it and heal it.”

  There was the usual moment where the pair went vague for a second as his power wrapped itself around them. Then they nodded and set to work. Nils grimaced and inhaled sharply as they set the bone, then gave a heartfelt sigh as healing power flowed into his flesh. The rather alarming numbness in his toes vanished.

  “Good…that’s good.”

  So what was his next move? He’d have to step up aeroplane production, borrowing what he’d seen of the Enerlish designs. Two pairs of wings, stacked vertically? Perhaps his engineers would understand the value of that. And then, he would have to start turning as many workshops as possible toward—

  Up on the ridge, his proxy clutched sharply at his neck in response to a stinging pain. Then his mind was wrenched from Nils’ grasp as he collapsed unconscious in the mud. Nils blinked in shock, and reached for his pistols as dark figures, moving low and almost invisible among the mud and scorched grass, appeared at the edge of his little hollow in the ground. They had long hollow reeds set to their mouths, which they aimed at the two corpsmen and blew hard. Both men clutched at the tiny darts which pierced their flesh…and fainted.

  Nils was lying too awkwardly to draw his pistol quickly. He commanded the attackers to stop, but felt his will skid and slither off the surface of their minds as if they were coated with oil and water.

  There was a puff from behind him, a sharp sting in his neck, and the world went…very…

  ...Something…

  A note from HamboneHFY

  A note from HamboneHFY

  Also by the author:

  - a three million word epic HFY story set in the near future, when humanity makes first contact with aliens and quickly discover that, actually, we're the ones to be feared...

  Dandelion - co-authored with Justin C. Louis. The story of Amber Houston, a young interstellar settler who becomes stranded and quickly discovers that she has inherited an incredible, and terrible, legacy of leadership.

  If you have enjoyed the Nested Worlds story so far and want to support the author, you can do so by:

  

  
• 
  
    http://patreon.com/HamboneHFY where patrons of all tiers enjoy early access to next month's chapter.
  
    


  
• 
  
    http://teepublic.com/HamboneHFY
  
    


  
• 
  
    http://paypal.me/HamboneHFY or buy me a coffee at
  
    


  
• 
  
    http://facebook.com/HamboneHFY/ or
  
    


  
• 
  
    The Nested Worlds or for The Deathworlders at
  
    


  

  The Nested Worlds is ? Philip Richard Johnson, AKA Hambone, Hambone3110 and HamboneHFY. The copyright holder reserves all commercial rights and ownership of this intellectual property. The events and characters portrayed in this story are fictional and any resemblance to actual persons or events is accidental. The author does not necessarily share or endorse the opinions and behaviour of the characters.